Chapter 5 - The individual differences approach to personality Flashcards
(52 cards)
Nomothetic approach
Builds testable theories that apply universally.
Idiographic approach
Studies individuals in depth and one at a time without generalizing.
Individual differences research
Identifies widely applicable dimensions of personality and other psychological abilities on which individuals’ scores can be placed and compared with population norms.
Psychometrics
Measures individual differences using tests constructed to high standards of reliability and validity.
Personality traits
Adjectives that describe enduring characterisics of people that are used as the building blocks of personality theories.
Trait dimensions
Adjectival descriptors of people that are expressed as bipolar dimensions.
Personality dimensions
Major bipolar features of personality that are widely applicable to people and form the structure of personality.
Implicit personality theories
Lay theories about personality that people use to attribute motives and to describe themselves and others.
Trait and state
Differentiates personality traits that persist over time from mood states that are transient and more dependent on situations.
Trait clusters
Personality traits in individuals that have been found commonly to group together.
Higher order traits
Personality traits that encompass clusters of surface traits.
Surface Traits
Ordinary language descriptors of personality that encompass what people do and express.
Trait theories of personality
Propose a hierarchical structure for personality built from traits and clusters of traits.
Lexical hypothesis
Personality descriptors in ordinary language relate in a meaningful way to personality as encountered in everyday life.
Factors
Technical term for empirically established personality dimensions.
Factor analysis
Statistical technique for establishing personality dimensions.
Hypothetical constructs
Psychological constructions used in theory building and hypothesis testing.
Inductive approach
Focuses on the collection of data unconstrained by theory allowing patterns, relationships and eventually theories to emerge.
Personality profile
Visual or numerical representation of an individual’s positions on a set of personality dimensions.
Inductive-hypothetico- deductive spiral
Cyclic process whereby theories that emerge from data are used to generate testable hypotheses and then new data that are fed back into the cycle.
Psychometric tests
Psychological tests that are based on rigorous psychometric properties and related to population norms.
Test reliability
The extent to which a test gives the same result for an individual over time and situation.
Test validity
The extent to which a test measures what it purports to measure.
Test–retest reliability
The extent to which a test gives the same score for an individual on two occasions.